In this paper, an attempt has been made to show that while at the initial stages of demographic transition it is the education of females that exerts significant negative effect on fertility, as the transition progresses, this effect tends to weaken, and the dominant pattern changes to one wherein it is the fertility level that exerts significant negative influence on educational attainment of children, especially of girls. By using crosstabular data from censuses and surveys, it is shown that much of the recent reduction in fertility and the rise in contraceptive levels in India has come, not from more women becoming literate over time, but from the changes in the reproductive behavior of illiterate women themselves. Further, using micro-level data from a national survey, it is shown that illiterate parents, while regulating their fertility, send more of their children to school. The first-born daughter appears to be the greatest beneficiary of the changing emphasis on quality over quantity in reproductive outcomes, as she is released from the burden of attending to younger siblings.